


Say Goodbye to the Rest of Me (the Best of Me)

by FireflySong



Series: Pride Month Writing Prompt Challenge 2020 [14]
Category: Until Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Child Neglect, Gen, Heavy Angst, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Other Characters Are Mentioned, but not enough to deserve tags, this is solely about the washington sibs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-17
Updated: 2020-06-17
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:07:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24767458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FireflySong/pseuds/FireflySong
Summary: Josh had never known life without his sisters. Logically, he knew that was wrong. He had been about two when Hannah and Beth were born, so he had nearly two years of life as the only Washington child. But considering he remembered exactly none of this, as far as he was concerned they had always been there with him.Written for Day 14: Hurt of the Pride Month Writing Prompt Challenge over on tumblr.
Series: Pride Month Writing Prompt Challenge 2020 [14]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1770988
Comments: 6
Kudos: 14





	Say Goodbye to the Rest of Me (the Best of Me)

**Author's Note:**

> just be aware that though this story brushes over topics of suicide and the heavy shit that josh went through, that i have no experience in any of it at all. the only 'mental issue' i have personally is that i was diagnosed with asperger's as a kid, so i have a form of high functioning autism, and the only meds i have ever needed was antibiotics because im a clumsy piece of shit. i tried to be respectful, but as someone who has a very limited view point of everything josh has, i was not comfortable delving deeper into it and knew that i am not the best person to properly portray it. if you think that i was not respectful, please let me know so i can do better in the future and change what i have written here.

Josh is nearly two when Hannah and Beth are born and, obviously, he remembers none of this. That isn’t to say that there are no pictures, because there certainly are. Pictures taken of him as a toddler holding a very small and very pink Hannah (or Beth, the pictures aren’t very clear), of him leading his sisters in taking their very first steps. It’s all very sweet and adorable but he can recall exactly none of it.

He is six years old when their parents start leaving them with their nanny in their big ol’ house. Their father was off doing his big, hot-shot, horror director job while their mother lived the socialite life and making contacts. This is when he learns that he will have to be the one to always be there for them. That there is no Washington family, only the Washington siblings.

When the twins are five, and he not quite seven, Josh takes their hands and leads them onto the school bus for their first day of kindergarten. Bob is off in Burbank for shooting (again) and Linda is in Vancouver making plans and contacts for Bob’s next picture (again). So it falls to him to find their classroom, help them around school, and collect them after school is done so they can go back home on the bus. 

Hannah and Beth are seven the first, and only, time Hannah broke her leg. Josh had been playing with Chris inside when they both heard Beth scream and the two of them had run outside with their nanny, Ms Klein, quickly surpassing them. Outside they had found Hannah laying under the big oak tree in their backyard, unconscious with her right leg bent and broken beneath her. Beth was sitting next to her, face white as she was screaming and crying that the two of them had just been trying to climb the tree when Hannah had slipped and fallen down.

Ms Klein had called an ambulance, sent poor Chris home, and called their parents to let them know what had happened. Shortly later, Hannah was loaded into the ambulance on a stretcher, still passed out, and taken to the hospital. Josh doesn’t think he will ever forget the sight of his mother barging into the hospital room hours later, fear and anger on her face, demanding answers from Ms Klein about what happened. By that point, Hannah's already gotten her leg in a cast and Beth had fallen asleep on the small bed with her. 

Josh is nine when he realizes that he failed his job as a big brother. That he can’t let anything, or anyone, harm them ever again. The oak tree is uprooted soon after, and quickly forgotten about, but he never forgets what happened, or what he learned that day.

Beth is eight when they all learn that Hannah needs glasses, and she throws a huge tantrum over it. It’s such a small thing in the long run, but it’s the pebble that breaks the giants back so to speak. It’s one of the few times that their parents are both home, so they immediately scold the younger twin over her reaction, telling her that she can’t look like Hannah forever. Josh understands though. She’s not throwing a tantrum because she’s jealous over the glasses. It’s because once again, Hannah is the one of the three of them that manages to bring even one of their parents home, if even for a little bit.

Josh is eleven when he starts going to therapy for the first time. Ms Klein had caught him in a washroom with his dad’s razor at his wrist. Not cutting, more just wondering what it would feel like. If it would be anything like the stories and movies make it out to be. If it would be worth finding out. He doesn’t tell either of his sisters of his close call, or the fact that he’s seeing someone for it now. Hannah and Beth have just started getting into their sports (tennis and swimming respectively) and they have enough on their plates. He doesn’t want to worry them.

It’s not quite a year later when he gets into a fight at school. There had been a boy a couple of years older then him taking tennis lessons with Hannah, and at first the two of them had gotten along fine. Nowhere near his friendship with Chris of course, but he had elected to join Josh at one of Beth’s swimming practices. 

Even now, Josh wasn’t sure exactly what the boy said to set him off. Maybe he made a smart comment about Beth in her bathing suit? Maybe he had made an aside about how it was a shame that the twins weren’t born male and should really just quit while they’re ahead? Possibly both? It doesn’t matter, really. All Josh does remember, is the feeling of his fist in the boys face and then its a blur of more fists and fighting and blood.

He’s not sure what the fact that he can’t recall the boys name says about him. He’s also not sure that he cares anyway.

It is the twins thirteenth birthday, and the three of them spend the day alone with only Sam as company. Their parents are off receiving an award for Bob’s latest horror movie, deciding that that is a more important event then their own daughters’ birthdays. Sam and Josh try to make the day the best that they can, watching all of Hannah and Beth’s favourite movies, and making an absolute mess of the kitchen as they try (and fail) to bake a cake. Josh think’s that they appreciate the effort, they seem in better spirits if nothing else, until later that night. That night, when he walks past the room that the three girls are sleeping in, he can hear the soft crying of his sisters to Sam ‘that it just isn’t fair’.

It makes him hate his parents even more. It’s one thing for them to ignore their broken and damaged son (a part of him he hates can’t blame them for that). It’s completely another to ignore their smart, beautiful, athletic, and completely normal daughters.

Beth is fourteen when she meets Jess and Matt in her class at school, and then Emily by way of Jess. It’s only a couple of days later when she introduces Hannah to them, and more importantly, to Mike. Sure, Hannah was maybe a little _too_ head over heels for the dashing class president, but he had been friends with Ash and Chris for years at this point and more then used to their own antics, so he saw no problem with this at first. In fact, he saw no problem with it for over three years.

And that was the problem.

When Josh is almost nineteen, he decides that his sisters will be happier without him there.

Beth is seventeen when she walks in on her brother deciding that she and Hannah are better off without him. She has never been more angry at him in her life.

Hannah is seventeen when she discovers that Josh has been going to therapy for close to ten years. She is heartbroken that he never told them, never trusted them with this fact.

Josh is nineteen when he is awoken from a drunken, hungover stupor to others frantically shoving him and Chris out of their seats, explaining that Hannah had run out into the storm, and Beth chasing after her, a little while ago and that they still haven’t returned. He is nineteen when he and his ‘friends’ scour the mountainside for any trace of his sisters. He is nineteen when he tells his parents that they can’t find head nor hair of them. He is nineteen when he is suddenly an only child again, seventeen years later.

At twenty, he remembers the promise made at the base of an old oak tree. He decides that the people who hurt his sisters, deserve to feel that hurt themselves. Returned ten-fold if need be.

**Author's Note:**

> you can find me on tumblr at love-fireflysong if you feel so inclined!


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